With the advent of balers which produce large bales of hay weighing in excess of a half of a ton, there has become a genuine need for hay handling equipment which was not needed during an earlier era when only smaller manually maneuverable bales were the only type being produced. It is especially a problem to load and unload such large bales for transportation over long distances. It is, for example, too time consuming to transport one bale at a time, especially by use of a slow-moving agricultural tractor. Normally, however, only a large agricultural tractor is satisfactory for lifting, loading and unloading bales because of the large size and weight of the bales themselves. Consequently, there has been a need to have specially designed trailers for hauling such bales. There has also needed to be some other equipment available to load such trailers at the point of departure and unload the bales at the point of destination. Usually such loading and unloading is accomplished by a large tractor with a fork-lift structure attached to its three-point hitch, and it is therefore necessary to have such unloading equipment at the point of departure and at the point of destination.
There is consequently a need for a trailer having a self-contained mechanism for loading and unloading a plurality of large bales of hay. Some such trailers have been devised, but many of such trailers have the disadvantage of being too expensive because of the complexity thereof. Such trailers also have the disadvantage that they are also expensive to maintain; and, because of the many moving parts thereon, there is an increased danger of breakdowns and a corresponding doubt about their dependability. At least one design of such trailer uses a chain conveyor structure to move each bale to its proper place on the trailer. It has been found, however, that such chain conveyor devices tend to tear up the bales somewhat. This is especially true with respect to large round bales having twine thereon which has rotted through due to long periods of storage. When such an exteriorly deteriorated bale is transported by a chain conveyor type of loading device, the outer weathered layer tends to be torn off and is lost. If the bale is then stored outside where it is subject to rain and snow, as is usually the case, then even more of the outer layer of the bale will become weathered and therefore be of less food value to livestock than if the original outermost layer had been retained.
When these large bales of hay are fed to livestock such as cattle, there is a tendency for such livestock to step on certain parts of the bale while eating other parts of it. Consequently, much of the hay is trampled into the ground and therefore becomes unsuitable for feed and is wasted. Accordingly, various types of feeders have been devised to be placed around such a bale once the bale is transported to the place where it is to be fed to livestock.
Because of the large size of the aforementioned modern bales, it is not practical or feasible, in most cases, to actually place the bale into a feed bunk or rack, but instead the rack is placed around it as mentioned above. Accordingly, it can be appreciated that several pieces of equipment have heretofore been necessary in order to effectively transport and feed such large bales of hay to livestock. There is therefore a need to simplify these operations as much as possible.